Today a jury awarded the Pennsauken, N.J. couple $49,000 finding that the bedroom furniture they purchased at J.C. Penney in Cherry Hill was infested with bed bugs. “For months, they didn’t know what was causing all their problems and the itching. When they found out that it was the bed bugs, it’s kind of like, it freaks you out a little bit,” said Kevin Siegel, an attorney for the family.

The family bought the furniture back in May of 2006. It was delivered 3 months later in June. It included a chest, dresser and bed-frame with a headboard, costing about $1600.

The family says they were given no choice but to sue after the company agreed to pay to remove the furniture, and to exterminate their room.

But that apparently never happened.

Their lawyer was Kevin Siegel.

You can read the full article or watch the video of Jessica Borg’s news report from WPVI Philadelphia here.

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• Family of five “run out of their home” by bed bugs in Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia

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The Los Angeles Times reports that Gloria and Robert Chisley claim they were bitten by bed bugs in the Barona Resort and Casino, in Lakeside, California (August 2005).

The case is interesting, first of all, because it concerns alleged events in a tribal resort/casino and so is being tried under the Barona tribe’s judicial system.

It’s also interesting because the resort and casino is claiming that the plaintiff had scabies, not bed bugs:

The tribe disputes Gloria Chisley’s contention that she was attacked by bedbugs at its hotel, suggesting instead that her marks were the result of scabies, a condition that would have taken weeks to develop before Chisley showed the marks to hotel employees.

Doctors who have examined Chisley are split on the cause of her marks — one saying bedbugs and two scabies.

Since many of us (especially a few years back, before bed bugs were as well known) were wrongly told by our doctors that we had scabies, I found this interesting.

I gather this is a less frequent occurrence today, as doctors are becoming more aware of the problem of bed bugs.

Incidentally, scabies can be tested for with skin scrapings. Apparently biopsies can also be done, in many cases, to verify a “bite” is from an insect. Neither test, from what I gather, is foolproof.

Scabies, untreated, will not go away. Bed bug bites, in the absence of bed bugs, will.

If the plaintiff was convinced by any of these doctors to undergo treatment for scabies, and at the same time, the couple were removed from the presence of bed bugs, when the condition cleared, it might be very hard to prove whether the scabies mite or bed bugs were the culprits.

And it isn’t clear from this LA Times article whether the couple saw bed bugs, or obtained bed bug samples.

• FAQ: Where can I read about bed bug lawsuits? Can you help me find a lawyer?
• Bed bugs at the College of New Jersey
• teaching doctors to diagnose bed bug bites
• Harvard dorm treated for scabies–but what was it really? Also, bed bugs at Columbia?

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A Toronto man has filed a civil suit against the Howard Johnson Hotel on Ellice Avenue alleging he caught a case of the bed bugs while rooming at the establishment.

Steven Lipson claims after a one-night stay at the hotel in January 2007 he developed welts and itchiness. Lipson alleges a dermatologist confirmed he was bitten by bed bugs. He is suing the Howard Johnson for damages claiming he suffered pain, embarrassment, and permanent scarring.

There isn’t much to chew on there, but we don’t often hear about Canadian bed bug lawsuits, so it does feel quite newsworthy.

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• bed bug lawsuit against the Mandarin Oriental Hotel, Kensington, London

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In a ruling of first impression, a Manhattan judge has scratched a request for punitive damages in a bedbug case.

But the judge, Acting Supreme Court Justice Judith J. Gische, let go forward the negligence claims of two Maryland tourists for bites they sustained during a two-night stay at the theater district’s Milford Plaza.

The tourists, Debra Grogan and her adult daughter, Dana, are seeking $2 million in compensatory damages and an unspecified amount of punitive damages.

In rejecting their request for punitive damages, Justice Gische referred to a New York City Department of Health pamphlet in ruling that the two women had failed “to raise a triable issue of fact whether bedbugs are anything more than a nuisance.”

It’s important to understand that the plantiffs are still able to proceed with their claims for $2 million in compensatory damages for negligence. Only the request for punitive damages has been rejected.

What is interesting here is that in making this decision, the judge apparently cited the NYCDOMHH Bed Bug Fact Sheet, which asks and answers questions about bed bugs, and says:

ARE BED BUGS DANGEROUS?

Although bed bugs are a nuisance, they are not known to spread disease.

The plaintiff is suing the Milford Plaza and the Pest Control Operator with whom the Milford had a contract (PAC Extermination Services). The Grogans stayed in a room infested with bed bugs that was near two rooms treated for bed bugs less than a month earlier, but which was itself not treated:

Evidence in the case showed that three weeks before the Grogans’ stay, the hotel had asked PAC to exterminate bedbugs in two rooms near the room reserved by the Grogans. Work orders had been issued for rooms 1511 and 1512 on Dec. 22, 2002. The Grogans stayed in room 1540 from Jan. 17 to Jan. 19, 2003.

The Grogans’ argument is backed up by an entomologist’s testimony that bed bugs travel from room to room:

In support of their claims, the Grogans presented the affidavit of an expert in insects who teaches epidemiology and other courses at the University of Alabama School of Medicine.

(It’s worth noting that although bed bugs are not currently known to spread disease, they are still the subject of study by an entomologist who teaches epidemiology in a medical school.)

The entomologist, Robert J. Novak, reported that bedbugs can “easily” migrate from one room to another and that “proper eradication techniques” require inspection of “adjacent or contiguous rooms, or even rooms on several floors above and below” the floor where the pests had been spotted.

With the defendants having offered no affidavit to counter Dr. Novak’s assertions, Gische wrote, the Grogans had presented enough evidence that the hotel had “constructive notice” of the need to fumigate room 1540 to deny the defendants’ motion for summary judgment.

The case must go to trial, Gische ruled, because Novak’s affidavit “set forth genuine issues of fact about the life span of bedbugs, how they migrate and whether these factors should have been (or were) taken into consideration by the defendants in how rooms were treated following bedbug complaints by other guests.”

Even more interesting, this case may have ramifications for the ways PCOs treat for bed bugs.

PAC Extermination Services had argued that it should be released from the case because its obligations were limited to completing work in specifics rooms the hotel had asked to be fumigate.

But Gische said a jury must decide whether the exterminator’s duties were so “comprehensive and exclusive” that it had assumed a duty to keep rooms, other than those for which it received work orders, in “a reasonably safe condition.”

We often hear from PCOs who treat buildings that landlords will ask them to treat just the infested room or rooms, and will often refuse to have other adjacent units on the same or other floors inspected. I can only assume that many hotel managers will make the same request.

In such a case, it’s my understanding that PCOs have two choices: refuse the job (knowing some other PCO will be happy to do as the landlord asks), or do the job, knowing it is likely not enough. This is not an easy choice to make, by any means.

Depending on the court’s findings in this case, we may see a change in this. It may mean more PCOs refuse to treat under such circumstances, insisting instead that adjacent and nearby units are inspected and/or treated.

It could also have ramifications for the price of treatment, since it will doubtless lead to more litigation along the same lines.

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Edward Higgins, the defense lawyer, tried to kill the suit, claiming it’s impossible to know how and when bed bugs arrived in the home, but the judge did not dismiss the civil suit:

Circuit Judge John McBain said there’s no evidence the YMCA camp knew of the blood-sucking insects in 2005, but a jury or judge could decide whether officials should have suspected bugs and used routine pest control.

Higgins’ response?

“No one in the Midwest had a clue there were bedbugs here,” Higgins said. “Most people thought it was the subject of a nursery rhyme.”

The bed bug blame game is a difficult one to win, as Higgins knows. In most cases, we have to admit a lack of definitive evidence as to the source of an infestation.

On the other hand, whatever the climate in 2005, the days of denying responsibility because you never heard of bed bugs in your area are now kaput.

Nevertheless, detecting bed bugs is no picnic even when you are aware, as many Bedbuggers will attest.

And it is true that you have to be aware in order to detect them. Still, the article asserts that

While bedbug population has been on the rise in the United States in the last five years, it is not true that no one in the Midwest knew of their existence before that.

“Bedbugs and people have been together since we lived in caves,” Michigan State University entomologist Howard Russell said.

Bed bugs have been here all along: we keep hearing this. Many entomologists and PCOs will assert they saw bed bugs (albeit more rarely) throughout the golden years of 1972-1999 (after DDT was banned in the US but before the current epidemic “began”). And yet others date the resurgence of bed bugs to circa 1999.

On the other hand, Russell does not see a clear link in the YMCA infestation and the home infestation:

“I would argue it was a coincidence because bedbug populations are on the rise, and there are many sources,” Russell said. Also, only DNA testing could prove the bugs hitched a ride from Storer Camp to the plaintiff’s house, he said.

Now, about that DNA testing: does he mean testing the home bed bug’s DNA (against that of the bed bugs found at the camp?) Or does he mean testing the client’s DNA being compared with that found in blood eaten by bed bugs at camp? Even if it’s proven that the bed bugs at camp and the bed bugs at home are from the same strain, or bit the same boy, how would either test prove definitively that bed bugs did not travel in the other direction?

Yes, I know a lot of readers will be really frustrated with me. Of course he got bed bugs from the camp, people will say. The same way that when someone first notices bed bug bites after a trip to a hotel, or the purchase of a new mattress (delivered in a truck), they will assume they know the source of bed bugs. And make no mistake, these are all probable sources. But it is also true in these cases that bed bugs could have been present in the home–undetected–before the incident in question.

That’s why the blame game doesn’t usually work.

I’m not a lawyer, but it seems like more than probability is needed to win a lawsuit.*  Perhaps that kind of evidence is available to the judge and jury.

Not enough information is available from the article to call this a coincidence, nor to place blame. We don’t know what the kid saw or experienced at camp vs. at home. We don’t know if he was bitten at home first, or at camp. And even if we did, this moment (the first bite) is often hard or impossible to identify: it appears you can be bitten for months without reacting. People sometimes report a large number of bites appearing at once after many bites not causing an immediate reaction; entomologists who feed bed bugs have reported this occurrence.

Because bed bug bites are allergic reactions, and vary so widely, it is very hard to say when the cause is introduced, or removed.

*Update (3/10/2008):  a reader who happens to be a lawyer responded to my comment above that, “I’m not a lawyer, but it seems like more than probability is needed to win a lawsuit.”

Actually, the standard for a civil case is
“preponderance of the evidence” — more probable than
not — basically more than a 50% chance.

http://www.answers.com/topic/preponderance-of-evidence?cat=biz-fin

Thank you, anonymous lawyer, for that correction.

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(The following is not really bed bug news, but a reminder of a time not long ago when encountering a bed bug in a place of business was a bit like finding a hair in your salad, but maybe more common.)

(These last two are not really bed bug stories, but they tell us something about how widely known bed bugs are becoming: they’re starting to mean something in popular parlance once again.)

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• bed bug news for 2007-11-16
• Bed bugs under discussion at university housing officers’ conference

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In this installment, we learn that bed bugs are taking a significant toll on Brown’s self-identity and social life:

Despite my anger, even our bug-laden living situation is finally normalizing. This process started first as a change in identity: I now think of myself as ‘the guy with bedbugs.’ It’s how I introduce myself. Maybe it’s not the first thing I say, but it will come up in the first five minutes of a conversation. I am taking an acting class and in the first session I said “hey, I am Nick and I have bedbugs,” as if I was in some particularly gross AA session. When I hear someone mention bedbugs in a conversation at a table next to me, I feel obliged to chime in.

They’re also making home very disorganized and uncomfortable, no small problem for someone whose office is at home. Things are not where they used to be; instead, they’re in bags all over the place:

While I am tempted to reassemble my room and my office (which are the same place), I realize there is every chance that the bugs will be back again so I have stopped trying to create a livable space and now just settle for someplace with interior heating.

We also learn that Brown still has bed bugs, well past the 30-day window landlords are given to eliminate bed bugs, under local housing laws. It is not unusual for landlords to need more time, though. Turns out, there are other reasons to be angry at the landlord:

Day 39

Our landlord, we discovered today, knew this apartment had bugs. The previous tenants moved out because of the bedbugs. The whole building - minus our apartment - was sprayed for bedbugs in the months after we moved in. No one mentioned this to us.

Isn’t this illegal? As I commented on the paragraph above, on Nicholas Brown’s blog, this should be illegal. Landlords should not be able to rent out an apartment that is known to be infested with bed bugs, to an unsuspecting tenant. I have a suspicion, however, that it already violates the housing laws. If any NYC rental housing experts are reading this, perhaps they could clarify.

Moreover, if the entire building except one apartment was being treated, any experienced PCO and even the landlord should realize that this might drive even more bed bugs into this unit.

What strikes me most about Brown’s saga, through these six installments, is how very typical it is. We at bedbugger.com have heard it all many times. While I am horrified to hear Brown’s tale, I thank him for sharing it in such a public medium.

By doing so, he may just convey the mess that bed bugs create in one’s life, as well as how easy it is to get them, and how very difficult it is to get rid of them, to those not yet in the know. And that recognition, my friends, is the first step in getting everyone else to help us fight the problem.

• Brown student wants to provide free bed bug treatment to those who can’t pay
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• New York City: Who’s responsible for paying for bed bug treatment? Complicated, in some cases.

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UPPER WEST SIDE—It seems there is a little detail about the condo conversion at 30 Lincoln Plaza that may have been overlooked: “You failed to mention that the building is infested with bed bugs…the management has confirmed this and is handing out pamphlets and they have even had a bedbug sniffing dog in some apartments..who knew! I would think this situation is going to really boost sales on those $1,185,000 647 sq/ft one bedrooms.” Bedbug sniffing dogs?!? Excellent. [CurbedWire Inbox]

While it’s always surprising to find out another building has bed bugs, it’s a good thing that the building management is aware and is taking action. I hope they undertake aggressive treatment throughout. (Imagine, hypothetically, the legal activity that would ensue if some units were infested but did not identify the presence of pests, were not treated, and were sold infested.)

This item from Curbed.com reminds me that a lot of the interesting bed bug “news” in the last four days has been leaked via gossip blogs: legal gossip, real estate gossip, ivy league college gossip (although this one probably had another itchy culprit).

Unlike “real” news–which is covered in the newspapers, and on TV and radio–like the spread of MRSA drug-resistant staph bacteria, which tragically killed a 7th grader in Brooklyn, bed bugs aren’t yet confirmed to cause disease and death. They have been unofficially confirmed to cause distress, stress, anxiety, sleeping trouble–and in rare cases, allergic reactions so severe they can kill. But nothing compared with the threat of deadly MRSA. I saw an ABC news segment here in NYC Friday night–kids at the school that youngster attended, were carrying bottles of purell, and startled parents and teachers were looking on in amazement as they reported washing their hands after using the lavatory (ABC7 produced multiple clips in which the students admitted this was new behavior.) The segment also featured a poster on the door of the school, and though it was not shown close-up, I am pretty certain it warned that the school had been exposed to MRSA and that people had to take precautions not to catch it.

Since bed bugs aren’t on the same level of threat, the reasoning seems to go, we don’t need to actually warn people about bed bugs in specific locations. And so “bed bug reports” are confined to the realm of gossip blogs.

Yes, it is true that hotels, real estate developers and brokers, restaurants, theaters and other businesses that are reported to have bed bugs in the mainstream media, will face worried customers and may lose business. The hotel industry in NYC, in particular, will be hard hit. One can only assume Mayor Bloomberg chooses to avoid confronting and admitting the true number of infested homes and businesses in this city (which I first considered in this post), because it would scare off tourists, who contribute so much to the city, as well as negatively affecting real estate, and maybe even how people spend their leisure time (and money).

But it does not follow that if we do not discuss bed bugs, publicly, then they will go away. The opposite is true: as long as businesses are in denial, or putting up a bed-bug-free front, the problem will keep spreading at an alarming rate, and eventually, I believe, the hit on businesses will be greater.

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• Bed Bug Helloise is shocked…
• The strange case of bed bugs in Bushwick
• What means this *TIPPING POINT*?

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NY1 news reported Thursday that Fordham senior Michelle Hopkins has filed a suit for negligence and unspecified damages over bites incurred in her “dorm” room (click “dial-up” or “broadband” next to the photo at the NY1 site to see the clip).

The interesting twist is that she is not suing Fordham; it’s not their space. Instead, she’s suing four parties: the lessor, owner, management, and booking franchisee of the New Yorker Hotel, where the ad hoc dorm rooms are located. She suffered an allergic reaction (including an asthma attack) that sent her to the hospital. Severe allergic reactions are rare but not unheard of around here: a few readers have gone to the ER under similar circumstances, with a life-threatening reaction.

Students from several NYC colleges are housed at the New Yorker, due to housing shortages. According to 1010WINS,

Hopkins, a Fordham University senior, was living in a room on one of four floors leased by Educational Housing Services Inc., a firm that leases and adapts living space for student use. (They have nine residences in Brooklyn and Manhattan.)

Educational Housing, the New Yorker Hotel Management Co. Inc.; Ramada Worldwide Inc., which has a booking franchise relationship with the hotel; and the Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity (the Unification Church), owners of the hotel, are named as defendants in Hopkins’ lawsuit.

CBS TV news also has a video segment on this. Luckily, Hopkins was only in the room for one week; 1010WINS reports EHS promptly moved her to another location, and she has since been rehoused by Fordham (extreme caution was exercised in these moves, since bed bugs are easily transported).

I also hope something is being done for others in the vicinity of the infested room. Other students need to be educated about the signs of bed bugs, and a good PCO should inspect all the adjoining rooms and those above and below the infested one.

This isn’t a great time to live in a hotel room. I’d guess that the high turnover in nearby units means hotel rooms are more vulnerable to infestation than apartments or student dorm rooms. Perhaps colleges need to find alternative solutions for housing shortages.

An interesting note: Hopkins’s lawyer is Alan Schnurman, also the lawyer for a number of other recent bed bug lawsuits: Eunice Juarez (who sued Disneyland), Alison Trainer (the opera singer who sued the Phoenix Hilton), Leslie Fox, who sued the Nevele Hotel in Ellenville, NY (in the Catskills), and Ellyn Gliksman-Sullivan, who sued her Park Slope, Brooklyn landlord.

• FAQ: Where can I read about bed bug lawsuits? Can you help me find a lawyer?
• Stanford bed bugs: university fights back
• bed bugs in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and at Cornell University dorms
• Stanford still fighting bed bugs

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Times reporter Chris Ayres writes from Los Angeles,

Five decades after being declared officially dead, the most toe-curling of all America’s critters has returned, with a spate of bloodsucking attacks on unsuspecting victims as they sleep. The culprit is Cimex lectularius - otherwise known as the common bedbug.

“The most toe-curling of America’s critters?” As I understand it, bed bugs came to North America with the early European settlers.

Until recently it was known happily to Americans only from nursery rhymes. Not any more. Up to 5mm in length, wingless, nocturnal and covered in microscopic hairs, the bedbug was supposed to have been eliminated from the US by the pesticide DDT, which was later banned by the US Environmental Protection Agency in 1972 because of the damage it caused to fish, birds and other wildlife.

But now the insect is back, and its sudden return has been proclaimed “one of the great mysteries of entomology”. Over recent months bedbugs have been turning up in hospitals, nursing homes, cinemas, dry cleaners, schools, public housing and even some well-to-do residential homes.

The article goes on to refer to Michael Potter’s words at the recent bed bug seminar in New York, Potter’s YouTube video, and Maya Rudolph’s lawsuit.

What about the lawsuit filed against the exclusive Mandarin Oriental in London, by a visiting businessman who was allegedly bitten extensively by bed bugs there?

Comments to the article from two Londoners and one London Pest Control Operator (David Cain, who is a participant in our forums) attest to the fact that bed bugs are indeed a serious problem in the UK. While the article does not claim bed bugs are not a problem in the UK, it also does not mention that they are.

Bedbugger.com’s cluster map (click here) shows the location of our readers in the UK, since June 2nd. We can assume our readers are people concerned about or seeking information about bed bugs. From what I can gather, most of our readers have, or recently had, bed bugs. As do the cluster maps of readers in the US, Canada, Europe and Australia (other places where people with bed bugs are most likely to log on to the internet and seek out our site about bed bugs that is primarily in English), our cluster map of the UK and Ireland shows bed bugs concentrated most heavily around cities. If you’re good at geography, you can imagine the city markers in these maps.

As I said in a comment which hasn’t appeared yet on the article’s site, London PCO David Cain is the only PCO I know of who specializes only in bed bugs. We hear from folks in the UK often. Rather than focusing on an exotic story of Americans being bitten by bed bugs and suing each other left and right (cue eye rolling and comments about silly Yanks), the Times should be paying more attention to its own bed bug epidemic which, while not reported on very often, seems to be significant and causing much genuine local distress.

There has been some coverage by the Oxford Mail, Norwich Evening News (original article no longer available), the BBC, the BBC again, thisislondon.co.uk, and this one about lorry [truck] drivers allegedly catching bed bugs on ferries between Scotland and Northern Ireland.

And, from the “Misguided Attempts to Solve Problem” file, let’s not forget this favorite from South London News online: “Bedbugs forced me to kip [sleep] in a cardboard box.”

It is not surprising that many of those articles on bed bugs in the UK talk about bed bugs as a “foreign” problem–something you might bring home from your summer holidays in (as in this example from an earlier Times column) Australia. Well, they are–in the UK as well as the US. But it is also very likely you got them from your neighbo(u)rs, and that they were born and bred close to your home.

Domestic or imported, bed bugs suck.

It seems to be a trusim about bed bug journalism: everyone thinks the bed bug problem is really bad somewhere else.

• The NYTimes is back on the bed bugs story
• Are you in the UK? Got bed bugs? Or have you had bed bugs?
• In London? Got bed bugs (or think you do)?
• the hotel industry lies: bed bugs in hotels as rare as Asian flu (i.e. Bird flu)

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